The Chinese automotive market never sleeps and this week was no exception, with a spate of new model releases, pre-order book openings, and production line roll-offs. Here’s your quick summary of the most exciting.
First up is Lynk & Co’s first full electric car, the Z10, for which pre-order books officially opened this week, along with the announcement of prices for the base version only.
The sleek sedan looks set to be sold in both 400- and 800-volt variants, three of the former, two of the latter, and just the one AWD model.
That base version, a 400-volt model with a 200kW rear-driven motor and 71kWh LFP battery, should achieve 602km of range on the generous CLTC cycle and will start at just 215,800 RMB, or USD$30,100.
Reservations also opened for XPeng’s new MONA M03 hatchback, the first car from the new budget MONA sub-brand. We’ll have a review of this on the site very soon.
A car conceived originally by ride-hailing giant Didi and since taken over by XPeng, the MONA M03 brings some of XPeng’s self-driving technology smarts and AI infotainment skills to the affordable end of the market, with prices expected to start at just 135,000RMB.
The M03 comes with 140kW and 160kW motor variants, two LFP blade battery options offering 515 and 620km of range on the CLTC cycle, and a super sleek body with a drag co-efficient of just 0.194Cd, making it the most aero-efficient production hatchback in the world.
Elsewhere, Nio’s new sub-brand, Onvo, produced their first L60 SUV this week ahead of expected deliveries in September.
Set to go toe-to-toe with the Tesla Model Y, prices for the L60 will kick off at just 219,900 RMB, a price that’s expected to perhaps cause some concern to Nio EC6 and EC7 sales.
It’s built on a 900-volt platform, will offer just one swappable battery of 60.6kWh, and will come with 240kW RWD or 340kW AWD powertrains offering between 501 and 555km of range.
The Voyah Dreamer MPV has also received a makeover with pre-sales of the updated model kicking off on August 28th.
As well as a bunch of exterior cosmetic updates, the biggest changes come inside where cabin space and comfort has been improved, particularly for second and third row passengers.
The other major upgrade is the adoption of Huawei’s Qiankun ADS 3.0 autonomous driving system, which may unlock some level of urban autonomous driving ability, as well as vastly improved obstacle avoidance skills.
And finally, no round-up would be complete without a Zeekr update, and a surprisingly early one at that.
We’ve already covered the upgraded 007 with the world’s fastest charging battery, but the ‘all-new 001’ that was only launched in February has now been updated yet again, with the Haohan Intelligent Driving 2.0 system included for the first time along with an updated Zeekr OS complete with the same AI skills as the 007.
That means an upgrade to dual NVIDIA Orin-X chips on the all but the We 95kWh RWD option, as well as an ultra-long range lidar unit, which will unlock the NZP urban autonomous driving system coming to Zeekrs in late August.
